Expert groups

The association of European employers, BusinessEurope, is the most active and probably the most powerful lobby group in the EU institutions. Determined to see the EU adopt policies that defend profits over people and planet, they have won privileged access to decision-makers like no other and even shape the direction of the EU as a whole. It is high time to roll back their power and privileged access.

The new EU Energy Platform Industry Advisory Group, created at the request of oil and gas majors like Shell, BP, Total and Eni, represents a conflict of interest on a colossal scale. These alliances must be stopped if we are to have any chance of breaking Europe’s fossil gas habit, addressing fuel poverty, and averting climate crisis.

The Commission ignored massive conflicts of interest when it hired the world’s biggest asset management fund to investigate the best way to make banking sustainable. “The BlackRock Model”, a report from CEO and Change Finance uncovers the scale of the blunder, and explains why the Commission needs to find a new approach to ‘sustainable finance’.

We pay our taxes, so why don’t corporations? The Big Four are embedded in EU policy-making on tax avoidance and this report concludes that it is time to kick this industry out of EU anti-tax avoidance policy.

On 4 December, the arms industry and the EU came together for the 'European Defence Industry Summit'. Our new joint infographic explains how arms industry lobbying is shaping the EU's 'defence' agenda.

Lobbying by the arms industry has been playing an increasingly influential role in EU policy-making and the EU's plans to start funding 'defence' research and development.

The final inquiry report of the European Parliament's 'Dieselgate' committee is about to highlight just how widespread emissions cheating has been among manufacturers, and lines up recommendations for curbing excessive car industry influence over emissions regulations.

‘Dieselgate’ was the result of corporate-driven deregulation. Our new report takes a look at the complicity of the Commission's 'Better Regulation' agenda and at the way member states and European institutions have turned a blind eye to industry-wide abuse.

New study on the Commission's legislative advisory groups highlights a continuing Big Business bias - despite Commission's new rules.

After nine months of hearings, the draft report of the EU Parliament’s inquiry into the Dieselgate scandal has it black on white: the European Commission and EU member states had known since 2004-05 that diesel cars’ nitrogen oxide emissions were far above legal limits – yet neither took action.

After years of claiming there was no need, the Commission has finally reformed the horizontal rules that govern its advisory groups, formally called 'Expert Groups'. There are two positive changes, relics from the last Commission, yet the reforms leave big business unchallenged in dominating the groups and therefore steering policy. Is this the end of Expert Group reform for another five years, or will the European Parliament have one last throw of the dice?

It's make or break for the European Commission's advisory groups, known formally as Expert Groups. First Vice President Frans Timmermans, the man in charge of transparency, plans to bring out new horizontal rules to make the groups more balanced and more accountable in a matter of weeks, but will he listen to the concerns of the public?